1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus or a recording apparatus provided with a medium feeder operable to support and feed a target medium to be subjected to a liquid ejecting operation or a recording operation.
The liquid ejecting apparatus is not limited to a printer, a copier, or a facsimile which employs an ink jet recording head and ejects ink from the recording head to a recording medium, to thus effect recording. The liquid ejecting apparatus is employed to encompasses an apparatus that ejects a liquid appropriate to an application, in place of ink, from a liquid ejecting head corresponding to the ink jet recording head onto a target medium corresponding to a recording medium, thereby causing the liquid to adhere to the medium.
In addition to the recording head, the liquid ejecting head encompasses a coloring material ejecting head used for manufacturing a color filer such as a liquid-crystal display or the-shaped; an electrode material (conductive paste) ejecting head used for forming electrodes, such as an organic EL display or a field emission display (FED) or the-shaped; a bio-organic substance ejecting head used for manufacturing a bio-chip; a sample ejecting head serving as a precision pipette; and the-shaped.
The recording apparatus is not limited to a printer, a copier, or a facsimile which employs an ink jet recording head and ejects ink from the recording head to a recording medium, to thus effect recording. The recording apparatus is employed to encompasses an apparatus that performs recording on a recording medium in a dot-impact manner, a thermal transfer manner or an electrophotographic manner.
2. Related Art
An ink jet printer is an example of the recording apparatus or the liquid ejecting apparatus. In many cases, an ink jet printer is provided with a feeder (a so-called automatic sheet feeder) which can set a plurality of printing sheets serving as a recording medium or a target medium. Such a feeder has an edge guide for guiding an edge of a sheet as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2001-278500A (JP-A-2001-278500). The edge guide is provided so as to be slidable in the widthwise direction of the sheet, as well as to be retained at an appropriate position corresponding to the size of the sheet. By such an edge guide, edges of sheets are aligned, and during feeding each of the sheets is fed in a correct attitude without being skewed.
However, on the other hand, when the side edge of the sheet is firmly restricted by the edge guide at the time of performing a recording operation on the fed sheet, a friction resistance occurs between the side edge of the sheet and a guide face of the edge guide serves as a transport load, thereby deteriorating a recording quality. In order to solve the problem, JP-A-2001-278500 discloses an edge guide provided with a plurality of convex portions adapted to come in contact with a side edge of the sheet with less friction resistance.
However, even though the above-mentioned edge guide is used, a friction resistance still occurs between the side edge of the sheet and the convex portions. Accordingly, since a transport load occurs, a recording quality is deteriorated. On the other hand, when the side edge of the sheet is not restricted at all, it is difficult to prevent the skew at the time of feeding the sheet in a case of a medium feeder in which a leading end of a sheet is once caught by a feeding roller and is then released backward for skew removal, when the side edge of the sheet is not restricted by the edge guide, the skew may not be duly removed.